There is increasing demand for systems that detect bacteria with good selectivity and sensitivity, in applications ranging from medical diagnosis to water and food inspection. Traditional culturing methods take several hours to days to give results. They require trained personnel to perform the tests as well as expensive laboratory equipment. Techniques using DNA amplification and detection, such as those employing the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), provide results over several hours.
DNA-based detection approaches offer the potential for miniaturization and have been integrated on silicon chips. The disadvantages of these methods are laborious sample preparation. More importantly, these methods primarily do not distinguish between living and dead bacterial cells.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such approaches with some aspects of the present method and apparatus set forth in the remainder of this disclosure with reference to the drawings.